“Ice mosque” to be created for tourists in Lapland

Some 25,000 guests from around the world travel to Sweden’s Lapland to stay in the famous Ice Hotel in the village Jukkasjärvi, from December when it opens until it closed in April. Around 150 couples a year are married at the hotel’s ice church. Now Sweden’s Muslims are planning to build an ice mosque in the village from winter 2012-13, as a chance to tell tourists more about Islam. “It would be a new way of seeking dialogue between different cultures and religions,” Imam Mahmoud Aldebe, head of the Swedish Muslim Association, told the local paper Norrländska Socialdemokraten. “It’s actually not such a controversial idea. It has been received well by everyone we have spoken to.”Ice Hotel founder Yngve Bergqvist is also interested in the idea. “We have visitors from all over the world, and many come from places like London or Saudi Arabia. We thought it might be a fun idea, seeing as we already have an ice church,” he said.Daily Telegraph[pictured: Ice harvesting in 1905]